


Niall One Shot // Based on Lyrics from: Spaces

by 1D_1Shots



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, This is really sad, You Have Been Warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4027222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1D_1Shots/pseuds/1D_1Shots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life doesn't turn out quite how Niall expected...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Niall One Shot // Based on Lyrics from: Spaces

_Who’s gonna be the first one to start the fight?_  
_Who’s gonna be the first one to fall asleep at night?_  
(Niall)

 

Maybe tonight will be the night, Niall thinks, getting a beer from the fridge, watching the headlights come up the driveway, the night she says she’s leaving. It’s weird. He knows it’s going to happen, knows the marriage is over, yet can’t seem to work up the will to do anything about it. It’s like sitting in your car, stalled on the tracks, watching the train barreling towards you. You know it’s coming, you _see_ it coming, but you can’t get out of the car.

For a brief second, the interior light illuminates the girl – the _woman_ (they were both still half-kids, for fuck’s sake, did being married make her a woman and him a man?) - who had been his wife for ten months. Not even, he reminds himself, the voice sounding strangely like his brother’s, probably because Greg has been acting every bit the older asshole brother who, since he’s been married for the admirable length of four years, gives unsolicited advice.

Ellie’s eyes flick up; he knows that she’s looking to see if the lights are on, if he’s home. Their eyes meet in the window. He raises his bottle in greeting, realizing that it’s the wrong thing to do. He does it anyway. Her walk to the house, bookbag over her shoulder (she’s gone back to school: _“I can’t just sit around this house, Niall, **not** looking at the room that was supposed to be a nursery.”_ ), takes what feels like an hour and in that time, Niall tries to pinpoint when it all went wrong.

They shouldn’t have gotten married. He knows this. But her family, chin-deep in traditional Catholicism, had mandated it and Niall, who, if he is honest with himself, has never been good at making his own big decisions and is far happier to let others do it for him, went along. He loved her, pretty much, and he’d sure as hell fallen in love with that tiny blur on the sonogram. So they’d married. It had been nice, at the beginning, though he sees now that was their first mistake.

Ellie had dropped out of university; the pregnancy had been a difficult one, the added stress of the paps hoping to get pictures of her ever-growing bump too much added stress. She could have continued online, but said she didn’t want to. Niall remembers that conversation because now he knows it was a test that he failed. When she’d said she wanted to be home, preparing the nursery, he’d said sure, great, whatever you want, love, see you when I’m home on the next break. How was Niall – Niall who, though he could be clueless, was guileless, said what he meant and just, naively, assumed others did too – to know that he was to say no, she should finish her classes? They’d been together a whopping eight months and at no point had he been home for more than six consecutive weeks in that time.

He goes to the door and opens it for her, having seen that in addition to her bookbag, her arms are full of books and her purse. The purse that cost nearly two grand, he thinks before he can suck that thought back into his head. She’s his wife. He has no right to be prickly over her spending the money he’d told her was not just his, but _theirs_.

“Hey there, pretty girl,” he says, the way he’s greeted her since literally the first time they’d met. It has gone from bad pick-up line, to cherished term of endearment, to what it is now: just another motion they go through that rings false. He’s not even twenty-five and he’s somehow got a near-failed marriage. This wasn’t how his life was supposed to be. But it’s as if he’s watching a movie whose ending he already knows but can’t change a damn thing.

She kisses his cheek, comes inside. He knows he should go to her, somewhere down deep he _wants_ to, but his legs keep him a few paces behind her. She sits on the couch and as he looks at her, he cannot help but think back to his final mistake, the fatal one.

He’d been on the road with the lads, their star perhaps not as bright as at the height of fame, but still selling out arenas. Ellie had only been four months pregnant, there was no reason not to go, he’d be back, over two months before she was due. Except the best laid plans can go wrong no matter who you are or what your bank balance is and when the worst case scenario became reality, he’d been halfway around the world. He’d come to her, but arrived too late.

And Ellie had never forgiven him.

She’d told him so. Not in words, no, but in actions. She’d turned cold, short with him, going to bed early and getting up before the sun. And Niall, so used to his own well-meanings, was ill-equipped, woefully unprepared. He’d grieved, still grieved, but he’d never shared that pain with her because she hadn’t asked and he hadn’t known how to build that bridge. In a moment of desperation, he decides he has to try, belatedly, the desire in him to make things work somehow dragging itself out of the hole in his heart.

“Ellie - ”

“Niall - “

They speak at the same time, and he knows he is too late. He looks at her, and for the first time in weeks, her face softens. She knows he was going to try, perhaps even loves him a little for it, but she knows it’s too late as well. They look at each other for a few seconds in which Niall’s heart breaks all over again, then come to a mutual decision. “Let me take you out for dinner.” They both hear it, even though it’s unspoken:

_One last time, for old time’s sake._

**Author's Note:**

> 1D One Shots are one-offs, 1,000 words or less and based on specific 1D lyrics. They feature the singer of that lyric and can be about a fandom ship (like Ziam) or that 1D member and a (usually) not-named gal/guy. And I do requests. :)
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at 1d-1shots . I toss up the new one-shots there first and take requests/prompts there as well. New to the fanfic thing, so (helpful) input is welcome!


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